[Editor's note: we are always keen to encourage and feature great Mapplets, a technology developed in our Sydney Engineering centre. Today, we are pleased to have a guest post from Expedia, talking about their innovative new travel Mapplet.]

Attention travelers: we’re pleased to announce the launch of a new Mapplet that will help you plan your next trip. Developed by Expedia.com.au, the Hotels & Attractions mapplet lets you search for hotels and fun things to do in destinations all over the world according to your dates of travel and preferred hotel star rating.

Featuring an easy to use interface, the Mapplet displays results from Expedia’s vast, global inventory of hotels and attractions. Hotels appear as red pins and attractions appear as blue pins, making them easy to distinguish.

Once you find a hotel or attraction that interests you, clicking on the pin provides more details. For hotels, these details include price, picture, description as well as objective traveler reviews from TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel community.

Clicking on an attraction pin provides a picture as well as a written description.

Just knowing location, price and the hotel description is not enough. Tapping into over 10 million hotel reviews by independent travelers like yourself will make all the difference in your quest to find the best place to stay.

And by displaying attractions along with hotels, the Expedia Mapplet makes it that much easier to plan and book every aspect of your trip. It’s one thing to find the right place to stay, but it’s another thing to know what you’ll do when you get there. With the Expedia Mapplet, figuring out both is easy!